Less With More

Long ago Christmas cards were a holiday staple.Flurries of images arrived every day, some with notes on the back, some with letters, many with just a signature and a good wish attached. Some of them had glitter glued to their fronts, some had a flocked velvet object prominently displayed, some were reproductions of Nativity paintings. All were read and put in a prominent spot and were later taken out of the house with the Christmas tree.

In those days, long distance calls were an extravagance and postal rates were low. When we wanted to get in touch, we used the US mail.

Quaint, isn't it? Now we can call anywhere in the country for one flat monthly rate. We send email, not postal mail. We have blogs and Facebook and Twitter and smartphones on which we can monitor all of these things. Our phones are always with us. We are reachable anywhere in the world.

So--what does this truly mean? We text messages to each other rather than make a phone call. We put up a status update to be read by all of our friends rather than write a series of letters to people we care about. We tweet with 140 characters (I just used 28 in the beginning of this sentence, if you count spaces--since I avoid Twitter, I don't know if I should or not) about anything that might have flitted across our minds at any given second. 

And the business world has discovered this great new accessibility to the point that many of us don't answer our phones. We screen calls or ignore them until much later, because frequently the caller is a robot, posing as a telemarketer. We read messages in our free moments, plan to respond later, and then often forget about them. There's really no impetus to respond to many of them because they're written to a world at large. What's written to everyone in fact is written for nobody. 

I am fond of people whom I never call. They're busy and I'm reluctant to break into their world. It used to be if someone picked up the phone, it meant they were in their living room. Now they could be at a party, in a meeting, having dinner at a restaurant, in line to go to the movies...This is why we text, but I have a landline. I don't have that capability.

And even if I did, odds are there would be no response until much later. 

I used to think of this blog as being a letter to friends and family, especially when I lived overseas. Now I don't expect responses here. It's become a notebook to myself. I do post notifications of new entries on Facebook, where (if I'm lucky) people will press a Like button in response.

Our conversations in real life have become different. "Oh yes. I read about that on Facebook, " we say in reply to a friend's news. Or even worse, "I keep up with you on Facebook." No need to meet for coffee when Facebook provides such an efficient alternative.

Last year I sent Christmas cards, each with a little note. They sank into the same vacuum as a Facebook message or a Tweet, with considerably more thought and financial outlay than is required by social media. It made me sad, enough so that I won't do it again. And it makes me sad that with so many ways to communicate, we do less of it than we did when there was only one.

Fashion Victim for Life

When I became a teenager, this was still a nascent category. My mother held the term in contempt; her generation went from being children to becoming young ladies and gentlemen. There was no middle ground.

Teenage girls when I became one were either bobbysoxers in rolled-up jeans and saddle shoes, or in full skirts and ballet slippers. Beyond that was really dangerous territory--we all dressed like matrons.

Look at the suits that Jackie Kennedy used to wear--with jackets that ended at the waist and straight skirts. Her shoes were utilitarian and well-bred. Jimmy Choo was what hookers would have worn. Those suits looked fantastic on Jackie and Babe Paley and the other trim, elegant social icons. Of course they did; they were cut in a Paris haute couture salon for bodies that were broad in the shoulders, slim in the hips. When translated to mass-markets like J.C. Penney or Ohrbach's and worn by women whose build was more in the peasant mode, they looked horrible. And when they were covering the bodies of adolescent girls, they looked even worse. Slender girls looked as though they were dressing up in their mothers' clothing and chubby girls looked like boxes. It was an ugly time for fashion in America.

"Good" coats were made of heavy wool tweed and were cut to go over a "good" suit. The shoulders were droopy and the arms wide; they hit the mid-calf, if the wearer had height, and the ankle area if she was short. They weighed about ten pounds and would have made dandy survival tents if they hadn't been wool and easily saturated by a rainfall. I hated my coats when I was in my early teens.

Then along came the British invasion with miniskirts and Courreges with body-skimming A-lines and Calvin Klein with coats that fit close to the body with narrow shoulders. It was a wonderful time for young women and we all happily threw away our garter belts and little white gloves. For me, clothes were fun--until about ten years ago, when I turned 55.

No matter how thin a woman may be at that age, put her in certain kinds of clothing and she looks absurd. The offending garments are all patterned after Paris Hilton et al, and are the kind that I privately call Trailer Park Chic. Skinny jeans, midriff tops, halters, skirts that look as though they were stolen from a drum majorette, leggings--or even worse, jeggings.

These are things that a 20-something can carry off. A 60-something looks at them and sobs. And yet that old hag has few alternatives, if she's shopping on a budget. (Yes, I love Eileen Fisher too--but can I afford her?) She can dress like a cruel parody of Kim Kardashian or she can go to hell in a handbasket, a polyester smock, and elastic-waist pants.

Frankly I'd rather wear rolled-up jeans and bobbysox. I frequently wear a printed, almost circle, skirt and a variant on ballet slippers. And I inwardly rage, rage against the dying of the light and charming pleasure that I used to find in wearing clothes that made me feel happy to get dressed in the morning.

(Just a simple cotton tunic top with long and narrow sleeves that hits just below the knee and a pair of black, well-fitting tights that don't cost as much as my weekly food bill--is that too much to ask? And bear in mind, the one who's asking is part of the Baby Boom generation--I'm sure many in my age group feel much the same way.)

The Gift of Restlessness

Some people might think it's a curse. It's whatever was placed upon me at birth that turns me into a screaming witch if I am in one place for six months without leaving. When I return, I always am happy to be back--for six more months. Then the edges of my life begin to fray again and I have to go away.

It doesn't have to be a long absence, but it does have to include at least a couple of nights in another city, another region, another country. Somehow that works a strange magic on my discontent and when I come home, I feel grateful for familiar things that had grated on me before I left.

Yesterday after five days of being away from home, I walked to meet a friend for a glass of wine at a cozy little cafe that feels French to me. The tables are cheek-to-jowl close but every conversation is its own little realm with secure borders. A glass of wine becomes two, but never more than that, and the talk is always absorbing.

The street that takes me there is bordered with trees and yesterday they were in full autumn color, flaring with orange, scarlet, and gold. The air was crisp and almost cold and suddenly I was in an East Coast city, savoring fall.

There were new photographs that evoked Grimm's Fairy Tales at a gallery along the way, childhood scenes that were startlingly bright and hauntingly eerie. To clear my palate after that jolt to my imagination, I stopped for the first time at a Catholic chapel that was designed to evoke the cave sanctuaries where early Christians found refuge and spiritual solace. At least that's the way St. Ignatius felt to me, perhaps not to its architect.

I love finding a new dimension to the city I've spent many years in, but this only happens after I've abandoned it for a while. I'm lucky. Although I'm a perennial Prodigal Daughter, Seattle always welcomes me home.

A Promise We Made, a Promise to Keep

I am a person who receives Social Security, and began to do so just before I turned 63. Because I was for years a woman who didn’t work outside the home and never remarried after my divorce, I became eligible for my former husband’s benefit, which was double that of what I had accrued in my own work history.

For twenty years, I had worked as a bookseller, first as a part-time employee, then full-time as my children grew older. Over time, my back and shoulders began to deteriorate and now I have almost monthly episodes of debilitating pain, where my activity level sinks to absolute zero and I am often sleepless, unless I take Advil PM.

My Social Security check is higher than most, thanks to my husband. My own Social Security earnings have gone back into the system, so that I am actually draining the fund only of what I earned myself. The excess is offset by what I accrued and didn’t take. This is true of anybody who earned a wage that was taxed for Social Security payments, and then chose to forgo their earnings in favor of a spousal benefit instead.

I am part of the Baby-Boom Generation that exceeded in numbers any that came before us. Most of us grew up in a time when the unemployment rate was miniscule and we were blessed with jobs, unlike many in our country today, The benefits we provided to our predecessors for Social Security went to a smaller number of people than those of us who were providing them—and in many cases our wages were higher than the money made by those who went through the Depression.  There should have been a surplus of money but it was used for other purposes by our government.

Now there is great concern for the generation that follows us who are responsible for our benefits, and I share that concern. If our government had repaid the money they have “borrowed” from the Social Security fund, this would not be a flaming issue today. I believe our government owes it to everyone, recipients of Social Security and those who are paying into the system, to find ways to replenish the funds that were used for other purposes.

There should be an income-cap on those who receive benefits—people with fat pensions should not receive a monthly Social Security check. Crack down on under-the-table wages by giving anyone in this country a right to work and the responsibility to pay into the system—then police employment venues notorious for paying off the books (restaurants, landscaping businesses, sweat shops). Within the realm of the Social Security Administration itself, there are people who are capable of finding far more creative solutions than I, ones that will not break the contract that has been made with the people of our country.

Much controversy rages over the cost of living increase of Social Security benefits and I’m going to add to it. Stop it. It’s a joke. Last year my increase amounted to $25 additional dollars a month. My rent also increased by $25 a month. Food costs have risen quite a bit. That extra $25 meant nothing in the scheme of how I live my life. If it will help the system, get rid of it. But also get rid of cost of living increases for our elected officials in Washington, they who pull down very decent salaries and receive health care subsidies too. Fair is fair, as we used to say in the schoolyard.

Speaking of health care, next month my check will be reduced by $100 to help provide me with Medicare. No. It’s not free, for those who labor under that delusion, and for those who receive less in their monthly check than I, this is a steep cut in income. (I know because it provides a substantial pinch for me.) It also is not a guarantee that we can get health care when we need it. There are co-pays and out-of-pocket deductibles, which not all of us will be able to afford. The medical establishment has come up with credit cards for anyone to use, with exorbitant interest rates, so that health care will be available to all—along with soaring debt. Is this the best solution that America can come up with?

I’m happy to have any sort of health care because I’ve gone without it for decades. I have never accepted any sort of government assistance as a single parent or as an aging woman with no health insurance. I have paid into the system that now sends me a monthly check, with my own payroll deductions and payments from my employers which otherwise might have come to me as income. I never begrudged that bite into my rather meager salary because I was helping to fulfill a promise that I believed in.

My generation believed in that promise. Now we are “a drain on the federal budget.” To those who flinch at our numbers, I ask them to look at statistics. More American women are dying at younger ages than ever before, and given the frailty of approaching years, most of those women are the ones who are aging. Men, of course, traditionally live fewer years than their female counterparts. Just so long as our health care system, eager for Medicare dollars, doesn’t prolong our lives with modern medical miracles, our shelf lives will be short. Our Social Security checks will go back into the system for the next generation, unless of course our government decides they need it more than the recipients do.

Gaining Invisibility

My body is resolutely aging and the changes aren’t pretty. Clothes at my favorite neighborhood boutique don’t fit me and the ones that would in other places are ones I don’t like. The last time I bought something to wear was at Old Navy last spring. Since I don’t have money, this is a good thing. The surprise is how easy it is for me not to care.

Nor does the weight prey much upon my mind, but that I can understand: Thailand taught me what weight loss really means. When the baht fell in the late 90s, I began to miss a meal or two far more often than I wanted to. First I became slender, then thin, then gaunt and haggard. My breasts disappeared and my face became drawn. A photo a student took of me during that time showed a death’s head flashing a rictus. I knew that losing another ten pounds could bring me to my knees but I didn’t know how to stop, aside from leaving cigarettes alone. That thought occurred to me no more than a couple of times. I told myself I needed them for stress relief, but of course I was too addicted to consider that for more than five minutes.

I came home to the states, put on some weight, and stopped thinking of poundage as being my enemy. It was my insurance policy. Even now, with my stomach becoming a small shelf, I look at this in a Thai way. I’m almost 65 and old women look better when they are plump.

I think of the Chinese sisters who made noodle soup on the corner of my soi. Each was plump and both were pretty. One was sweet and one was stern; both of them liked me and I adored them. Across the way two other Chinese ladies made the same kind of soup. They were lean and they were not at all happy. Their soup was better than the one I ate several times a week, but I had stopped eating it long ago. The plump ladies were more fun to be around.

When I stopped smoking seven years ago, I was still sporting a figure that was much younger than my face. It yielded me nothing more than the envy of women who were much younger than I and coveted my waistline, and the comments of men hanging out on the street. “She old but she in great shape,” one entrepreneur of dubious substances proclaimed as I walked past a McDonald’s corner and another provided the generous assessment, “I’d fuck her,” on what was mercifully an almost deserted street.

Much has been written about the “invisibility” of women as they age, and it’s usually in the form of a complaint. The women who rail against this are stark, raving mad, as far as I’m concerned. From the time I hit my teens, I withered under the calls of “Hey, baby” and piercing whistles. When I lived in New York, the “visibility” that was mine when I walked past a construction site made me want to shrivel up and die on the spot.

Even when I was pregnant with my first child at the ripe old age of 21, as I walked down a street in Anchorage on a Sunday morning, a man felt the need to remark, “Bet she wished that she had danced all night nine months ago.” Believe me, this sort of visibility is not the kind of thing that makes a woman feel special in any way, and when I received my cloak of invisibility at last, it was a milestone. At last I could walk in the world without being threatened or humiliated. It was an acquisition as useful as my passport.

In the parts of the world where I want to be, old women receive respect. Younger women receive ravenous attention, no less threatening for being silent. In the part of the world where I live, I can walk for miles without comment. I love it. Would this still happen if my body were slender? Thank you, but I really don’t want to find out. My thickening body is a form of protection and, for the most part, I appreciate every pound.

Except of course when I look at clothing that will never be mine—but then I think of how much time and money I spent on my outer covering over the years. I still love color and fabric and when I find something I like that fits my body, it’s better than Prozac. It’s no longer an obsession, however, and that feels good.

“You can’t just let yourself go when you get old,” a woman twelve years my senior told me once to justify her extravagant wardrobe. I’m as old now as she was then and my feeling is I’m not letting myself go, I’m letting go of cravings. The Buddha, I tell myself, would understand.

Hello, Cambodia

Yesterday I made a short trip that took me farther away than I expected. The review that I’d read in the local paper said I was headed for a place with good, cheap Khmer food; Yelp was filled with young Cambodian voices saying it had the food their grandmothers cooked. So I went to White Center and found the spot wasn't too far from other places I'd been to in the area, housed in a diner with a little grocery attached.

I was there to meet my son Nick and I was early so I went into the grocery. The door was open, the counter was bustling, and the customers were speaking Khmer, which I thought was a very good sign. A little produce section had the pea-sized green eggplant that’s a major ingredient in green curry, which I haven’t seen in this city for over a decade, so I was enchanted. Going to the counter with that and a pack of phrik ki nu, I noticed the woman in front of me had a little package of perfectly red rambutan. “You have that here?” I asked in delighted shock and she led me to a pile of plastic-wrapped thorny red orbs.

I returned to Queen’s Deli, glowing with discovery and was led to a table that was sticky from earlier inhabitants. I didn’t care, even when the laminated menu  also turned out to be a bit worse for wear. I was dazzled by the choices, mostly soups, two that claimed to be “ancient” and that I’d never seen before in any form. Others were reminiscent of Thai dishes, and one had clear echoes of ragu.

I asked for appetizers—fried chicken skewers and nom krok, prepared like kanom krok but “Not sweet,” I was told. Each of them could have been their own meal, the cakes solid with a filling that was I think rice and coconut milk, and the chicken was fried wings, absolutely delectable, a whole plate of them.

My “ancient” soup was on the menu as being a noodle dish with an assortment of vegetables. I thought it would be a simple, clear broth, with noodles that I hoped would be thick, and chopped vegetables both in the bowl and on the side. What I received were three hearty nests of kanom jeen noodles, a cloud of finely chopped and sliced vegetables on the side, and a bowl of green broth. I sniffed it and was amazed at its fragrance.

The beans that came with it were chopped as finely as if they were chiles, the cabbage was in slivers and I think it was daikon that was almost a dream of its former self, so fine that it nearly melted when I picked it up with my chopsticks. And the banana blossom was in thin, concentric circles, crisp and bitter. “This hasn’t been frozen, has it?” I exclaimed in a state of near ecstasy and the man who was clearly the owner said proudly, “From Florida.”

The broth was filled with flavors that were clear and yet mingled into something that I couldn’t pick apart into its separate components. Fish sauce was plainly in evidence but no coconuts had been brought into play in any form. Still the broth had substance and I couldn’t decide where its body came from until I neared the bottom of the bowl, where a layer of pureed aromatics rested. “Yes, we thicken it with lemongrass, tamarind, and galingal,” the owner told us. At that point I had to clamp my jaws together to keep from asking him to marry me.

Nick’s soup had a coconut milk underpinning but the flavor of fresh vegetables was prominent in the broth. The vegetables were in small chunks and their colors were still bright in the bowl. My soup, I decided, was a very sophisticated form of kanom jeen

We crumbled our way through the doughnut and sesame ball that were given to us at the end of our meal, and I felt a bit shamefaced when the internal egg yolk that we’d avoided turned out to be a filling of yellow bean paste and coconut.

Through our meal, the low murmur of old men speaking Khmer and the sweetness of Cambodian pop music videos formed the background noise. I left feeling warmed by Cambodia and deeply happy that a part of a country I love is only a bus ride away.

The World Is Too Much With Us

Anne Truitt writes in Daybook about the sounds of her childhood and those that her children had always heard. She had no Muzak, no droning voices coming from a TV set.

In the time when she became aware of the world, magazines were text-laden, not image-driven. Pictures to her were paintings, not photographs. Her life wasn't tranquil, there were cataclysmic wars and the Depression, but it was quiet.

Now silence is a luxury; people travel to experience it. Although I live alone and work at home, noise is a constant presence. The sound of jets, buses, street construction, passersby, the apartment-dweller above me who comes back home after the bars close--I never play music anymore and only turn on my television at night for baseball or a movie. Still I live with the constant presence of sound. I wear earplugs to bed and frequently turn on my bathroom fan to create a barrier of white noise.

Mornings have the closest approximation of silence and if I'm careful, my mind is still unrippled then. That's when words come most easily and the work that is truly mine takes place--but only if I ignore the icons on my computer screen. If I let myself click once, the world is with me and the morning becomes sociable. Because I live alone, that one click is perilously seductive.

My computer isn''t just my workspace. It's supplanted letters, the telephone, the daily newspaper, a set of encyclopedia. It's how I stay in touch (on a superficial level) with friends on other continents. It's immediate gratification, an instant cocktail party. It's becoming my memory in a way that frightens me--can't remember? Google it.

I could stop going to the grocery store if I chose to, forgo DVDs for "streaming," have conversations through a social medium. Why not? Already so much of what I used to enjoy comes through this screen. Sometimes I think the only part of my life that can't come through a computer is travel. It's why I yearn for the discomfort of being wedged into an airline seat for hours on end; it's one of the few inevitably raw acts in my life.

I wish someone would bring back the word processor, a glorified typewriter with no accompanying distractions. Without that, I have to learn not to squander the best time of my day by clicking an icon. It will all be there, the photos, the links, the badinage, the Scrabble game, the abbreviated letters, waiting for my tapping finger to bring it into being. But the work won't wait. It fades away with sociability, dissolves into a weird sludge of the mind and spirit if it isn't given voice. 

Carrie Fisher once said "The trouble with instant gratification is it takes too long." She said that in the early '90s; today it's as quaint as any sentiment embroidered on a Victorian piece of needlework. Now the trouble with instant gratification is it can strain the muscles in your index fingers.

Not Everything Fits in a Capsule

Many thoughts occupy my mind but few of them fit comfortably in a blog post. It's not a matter of length, but of tone. Who wants to read about the feelings that come crashing in along with the arrival of a Medicare card? Or  the realization that one is the oldest in an extended family but isn't ready to be a matriarch? Or what to do about back pain which seems to have ambitions of settling in for the long haul? Or about that fine line between solitude and loneliness?

Does anyone really want to know the "if a tree falls in the forest" feeling that comes after a book comes out into the world? Didn't think so,,,

What about the restlessness that erupts after being in the same place for two years? Yes, I'm yawning too.

The happiness that comes when the shape of a book is in place and it's ready for revision, which could be my favorite part of being a writer? The pure and wholehearted joy that descends after finishing all three books written by Jesmyn Ward and discovering that they fit into an intriguing whole piece of literature that stands up to frequent reading and re-reading? Close but no cigarillo. (Which brings up the strong urge I've had to start smoking again, if I could only afford that stupidity...)

The realization that economic class is as defining a factor in our country as race and the unexamined truth that huge amounts of money are spent by the powerful to conceal that fact? And the sadness that we have a president who would be listened to if he brought this up for public discussion, and yet he chooses to be silent?

Is the queasiness and waves of chill that I've felt for the past few days caused by swallowing unvoiced thoughts or is it the flu? "Horseman, ride by."

In My Little Town

I've always been a city person, loving the rush and color and excitement of urban streets. Now if I want that adrenaline surge, I go to another country. It doesn't have to be on another continent--Vancouver B.C. works just fine.

In my city, the streets are hazardous. I used to love walking downtown. Now I'm always on the lookout so I don't step in human excrement. How did this come to pass?

When I borrow books from the library, I bring them home and pop them into my little freezer compartment for three days. When they come back out, they go in a ziplock bag when I'm not reading them. Below-freezing temperatures kill bedbugs after three days, a librarian at the University of Washington was quoted as saying. The eggs live on until a second freezing period takes place--that's why I use a ziplock bag.

We have a world-famous library downtown. I rarely go there anymore. It's a hangout for people who have nowhere else to go; they fill computer stations and tables and reading areas on every floor. While I'm glad they have a place to go, they make me sad and when I'm browsing the stacks on upper levels, they make me uneasy. I go to my little neighborhood library instead, requesting that books from other branches be transferred there. If you think I'm exaggerating, do a google search for the illuminating article about the Rem Koolhas-designed public library that was published in the Atlantic shortly after I returned to Seattle almost two years ago. Things haven't changed a bit since 2011; in fact they are worse.

A bus ride on the King County Metro system is something few people experience unless they have to. I've never owned a car or even a driver's licence, but after being on the same bus as a naked man wrapped only in a blanket, or with a man who vomited in front of the driver instead of presenting his fare, or having a man profusely bleeding from the face argue vociferously for his right to embark, or sitting beside countless pitbulls, I'm beginning to wish I could afford a chauffeur.

My neighborhood has its share of indigent people with personality disorders, and the sidewalks are cracked and uneven. Even so the concrete is clean and all kinds of people walk on it--it's a pedestrian's area. Few people panhandle or sit on the sidewalks with their bags and their dogs and their cardboard signs. I rarely leave the boundaries of Chinatown--unless I go to another country.

Seattle is supposed to be one of America's most livable cities--if you live in a buffered version of it. Otherwise find a neighborhood you love and stay there.

Non-Developing Country

This is Bangkok, the capital city of a developing country. In this snapshot are at least six forms of public transportation, the (stairs of) the Skytrain that lead to the subway system, buses, passenger vans, taxis, and motorcycle taxis. Oh--and many, many private automobiles.

I now live in Seattle, a burgeoning city of a developed country. Outside my window blares the construction noise that will eventually become a streetcar that will extend for not much more than a mile through the city. It is in proximity to a lightrail system that runs from the airport to downtown, with stops along the way. For years there has been construction that will become a lightrail spur that will extend the line by another three miles at best. The city at present depends on a bus system which faces extreme cutbacks due to budgetary shortfalls. This is not a matter of concern to many of the city's residents--they have private automobiles.

Bangkok has a love affair with private automobiles that arguably exceeds that held by Seattle. A middle-class family in Bangkok frequently has a car for each member old enough to drive, and a car and driver for those who can't yet reach the steering wheel. In spite of the notorious traffic jams that bring the city to a standstill, people cling to the comfort and privacy of a car. Even so, Bangkok has spent years and a lot of money on public transit.

At first the passengers on the Skytrain were mostly tourists. Bangkok residents who used public transit stuck to the buses, which carried passengers at a fraction of the Skytrain's cost. The subway, except for commuter rush hours, was almost empty. But not any more--and the people who crowd into these conveyances are local, covering a wide gamut of income brackets. 

The cliche "If you build it, they will come," proved true in a city that at first was lukewarm toward high-speed mass transit. In the U.S. only Los Angeles seems truly committed to providing an alternative to the automobile--imagine, the city with the most highly developed car culture is working full-tilt on a regional subway system.

Meanwhile in Seattle, I spend hours every week waiting for a bus. Often I discover that the bus I'm waiting for now longer exists. The ones that are still in the system hold no allegiance to any sort of schedule. As I used to in Bangkok years ago, I now figure two hours to go anywhere by bus in Seattle. If I'm early, good--I'll relax over coffee and a paper. However, I always am accompanied by a strong sense of irony, realizing that as Thailand becomes more of a developing country, the United States is achieving the status of a non-developing one.